Restrictions on Rehiring of Severed Employees

Rae NJ

Does anyone out there have any restrictions regarding the rehiring of severed employees? I have a situation wherein a division of our organization is being dissolved and people are being offered severance. Some questions are coming up regarding hiring some of the severed employees back as temps in our (a separate) division. I wanted to know if anyone out there has restrictions around this practice. . . .Thanks!

lorrie

Our company will consider employees eligible for rehire if they leave on good terms. I can't think of any reason not to. (Unless you are concerned about employees being disgruntled with the company due to the dissolution of their department? Or is the concern over them getting a severance pay, & also being rehired - sort of double dipping?)

POPEYE

I don't have a policy to share, (other than we have a No Re-employment policy except under certain medical conditions), but I do have a couple of questions you need to consider before allowing this. What criteria will you use to choose who returns and who doesn't? I can see discrimination claims written all over that unless the plan is very well defined and excellent documention in place. How will you handle your benefit accrual for the returning employees? You will need to have written specifics in place to address that.

TN HR

I see this as a major plus all the way around. You're bringing back these employees as "temps" (by that I assume through a temporary agency), which means that since they already know the organization, culture, etc, they should be able to hit the ground running. Also, since they will not be "new faces/new names" you avoid the "outsider/not-one-of-us" stigma common with temps.

HRLASS

The only restrictions we have are against rehiring anyone who has been terminated for cause. Other than that, we rehire periodically and have quite a few employees (including our CEO) who left the company for a year or two and then came back. Sometimes we recruit them back, sometimes they reapply.

In your situation, we have both transferred employees to another division where their skills can be used instead of termination, and used them as temps for project work. I recommend either transferring them or hiring them instead of temping if its appropriate as we have had problems in that situation of ending up with indefinite long term temps and then you have DOL problems. Pluses include no severance if they have not lost their jobs, and no unemployment. It also builds good will in showing you tried to re-employ when possible.